Lets go around the room

Talk about anything PB2K related.
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Chuck
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Lets go around the room

Post by Chuck »

Take a second and tell us who you are and which pinball 2000 games you have.
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dangerwil
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My interest in the project.

Post by dangerwil »

Hey,

I have been a collector ever since I took my first job as a technician for Southern Music in Jacksonville, FL in 1988. Over the years my collection has risen and fallen, but I still have my first EM pin, Gottlieb Outer Space. Having worked on so many crappy amusement machines, I really know the value of having spare parts to keep these babies going.

I always find an extra boardset and extra unique parts to keep inside my machine for "That Day" You know, when you go to turn on the game, somebody is over and really geeked to play and bzzt, dead. But you have already done the leg work, pop in your working boardset and worry about getting the spare fixed later.

Well Steve Young told me that pin 2K will be the first system to fall off the edge of the cliff. He was right. Blow a prism card and you are toast. $1000, if you can find one.
Now we have "A New Hope" Easily replaced consumer computer parts running the coolest pinball system ever. The only stumbling block that I can see is the legality of sharing dumps of the masked roms. I hope all of this gets settled, but at the end of the day I just want my RFM to stay working so I can play a few games when the mood strikes. (and kick all my buddies a**** ; )

I currently have a dedicated RFM. I picked up a Star Wars kit, but the game just didn't play well IMHO. Certainly not well enough to take up RFM's space.

Bill
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Chuck
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Post by Chuck »

Well, I guess it's only fair I do this too.

I've been collecting video games for over 20 years. I picked up my first pinball machine about 4 years ago and have been hooked ever since. I went to a guy's house to buy a theater of magic. When I got ther I saw it was hacked to death. He had just recieved a container of pins and had a RFM. He told me I should buy it since I was a video guy. I played it and couldn't believe how cool it was. A few months later I bought a NIB Episode One kit and occasionally put that in.

Don, another team member, and I have talked about working on this for years. We finally decided to start the project last spring. I posted an open invitation for help and I don't think anyone responded ;-) Around the same time I saw an old post on the visual pinball forums from Steve Ellenoff, also a team member. I asked Steve if he wanted to work on this and he was interested. The rest is history. We will tell more of the details after the product ships.

Currently we have a rough working solution. Actually, it's really not very rough at all. We just have a number of loose ends to tie up. It was very gratifying to be able to play RFM and SWE1 without the original computer or prism card. Actually, RFM is pretty much all I've been playing for the last few months :p My other pins are getting lonely.

No one wants to spend $1000 for a prism card. One person emailed me because he owns a game and no roms. It's really great to be part of a project that saves great pinball machines. And who knows, maybe someone will want to make more pin2k machines one day ;-)
Kenbo
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Post by Kenbo »

I played a lot of pinball in the mom and pop burger joint across from the high school during the early 70s. During and after college I sort of lost interest as machines got more complex. It just didn't seem worthwhile to invest my meager spare quarters in pins that would take a long time to learn.

Fast forward to the year 2000. Married, no kids, and we built a new house in the boonies of the Oregon forests. The nearest town was a 20 minute drive and it became quite the treat to drive into town for a pizza. At the pizza place they had an RFM and my wife and I had a blast downing pitchers of beer and playing it. We really looked forward to playing it.

One day prior to Christmas in 2004 I discovered that you could actually BUY these games for home use. That's something I never even considered possible, so I bought an RFM for my wife for Christmas (yeah, right) and discovered the joy of a new hobby.

Well, pins have pretty much taken over the basement and RFM is still one of our favorites. It still runs great but every time I turn it on I worry about it breaking and not being repairable. This project gives me hope! Who knows, I may pick up a SWEP1 to have both and will need some assurance that they won't be doomed if the electronics fail.

And then there's the potential for completion of Wizard Blocks....
ChadTower
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Post by ChadTower »

I don't have a p2k pin... mainly because I can't afford $2k for a pin that could be truly dead at any time. If a reasonable cost alternative for the irreplaceable parts were available it may push me over the edge to pick up an RFM.
nworker
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Post by nworker »

Home use of pinballs started when my sister-in-law got a Genie. Every time we would go to her house we would play and play and play. At the time, I thought it would be cool to have a game of my own.

The first game that I purchased was Apollo 13. What a great game! I learned all about how pinballs worked and I was hooked. About a year later, I purchased a HUO RFM. I set about getting spare parts and at one point talked with Steve Young. He said to stay away from the game as they were sure to have trouble. I went out and purchased a NIB SWE1 insert and that was a pretty good game too.

The part that I was most concerned about was the monitor. I did a project to figure out how to replace the monitor, because by that time the two monitors that were used to build the P2K were NLA. I did a lot of research and at one point exchanged email with George Gomez on how to wire that baby up. I wrote an article that I gave to Clay and he posted it along with the other information that he had for repairing p2k.

I would love to have this game live on as I think that the p2k is a fantastic platform. The driver board is such a nice improvement on the WPC version. The whole idea is a great combination of software/hardware/entertainment.
mickster
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Post by mickster »

Well I have been in vids and pinballs about 8 years now. I do computer consulting and I also have an electronics degree. I own both a RFM and a SWEP1 and love them both. I have been using MAME for the last 8 years so I am familer with the use of emulation and I think this project is great. I hope that along with having low system requirements (to keep the hardware cheap), the replacement os/software is generic enough to work on future platforms so that it doesn't end up in the same boat as pinball 2000. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help or beta test (I don't expect anything for free, I would just like to help out the project if possible).


Depending on how crazy you want to get with the code, I imagine it could be setup so that our pinball 2000 games could be linked to a webserver and us pin2k guys could have online tournaments!


For more background on my collection, feel free to visit my website at:

www.mickster.freeservers.com
digger47
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Post by digger47 »

I'm a retired electrician, (chicago transplant) living in FL. I have a RFM along with 4 other pins
got turned on to pins in the late 50's, had a few games over the years and the first thing I moved with me to FL, before the bed or furniture
was my TZ. pinball.

Pinball has come a long way and I am glad you guys are trying to keep
it alive.
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dweingarden
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Post by dweingarden »

I've been programming video games with Chuck for 25 years. I design circuit boards and do embedded programming for a living. I always loved pinball but the places around here sell beat up games for way too much. It wasn't until 3 years ago that I found out about RGP and buying games from collectors. I own 6 pins includng RFM and a SWE1 kit as well. I wanted an easy way to switch games without damaging roms. I also worried about the Prism card. We have a few problems left to solve. :D
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sellenoff
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Post by sellenoff »

I fell in love with video games from the moment they arrived, aka space invaders, pacman and all the others in between. Got bored of them during the late 80's, but then I got hooked on pinball in 1990 during my finals week in college on T2 and Funhouse.

Decided that one day I would own a collection, since I was pumping about 10$ a day on those 2 machines. My collection (which is pretty much finished, no space, no money, etc..) consists of about 23 machines, most pins, of course both RFM & SWE1 are among them.

I've been a huge fan of Pinball 2000 since the moment I saw one. RFM was my first NIB pin (although had I had opportunities prior to it, I would have loved earlier NIB games too). At the time I bought it though, I was already having reservations about support and parts. In fact, prior to purchasing a real SWE1, I had bought the playfield swap kit, and on the very first day, I ripped the pins right off the prism board trying to do the "rom swap" thing. Luckily it was under warranty, so I got a free replacement, and found out the proper way to open the prism sandwich. Even then, the distributors said it was getting harder to locate new prism boards, and that was in 2000!!

I'm a business software developer, but in pinball and video game circles, I'm known for my work in PinMAME and MAME writing emulation software for video and pinball machines. Having worked together with the other pinmame devs in emulating nearly every solid state pinball platform created, it was always my desire to emulate the PB2K platform, since it's no doubt the most complex of all systems. Reverse engineering the platform was truly rewarding and very challenging.

Once the emulation software was working, I set out to see if I could remove the need for all the customized pb2k hardware, since as an owner, I wanted to ensure my own machines and everyone else's would remain workable for many years to come w/o obscene costs required to horde the original parts. I made several milestone accomplishments, but also got stuck in several places realizing that a 100% software solution was not viable.

Luckily Chuck happened to find me and with his and Don's assistance we've brought the idea far closer to reality than I imagined. Stay tuned for more details as we get closer to being ready to go.

-Steve
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Post by 87xr »

I have always loved Pinball. My Dad and I would play at a local bowling alley. He would always kick my butt. :-] So growing up, I kept practicing so someday I could beat him. We did not have a lot of money, so Pinball was a game that I could play and possibly beat. I could stretch my $1.00 worth of quarters the furthest since that was all I was getting anyway.

I bought my first machine for home from a guy that had one in his garage covered in junk. The machine was a 1974 Gottlieb Top Card single player. I paid $250 for it. The machine wasn't in too bad of shape. I fixed a few things on it making it %100 working. I wish I could remember what the guys name was that sold me the machine... After a few years I sold the machine for $250 to a local collector. This started my restoration obsession.

So one day after work in 2000 a friend and I decided to have a few drinks after work. It had been 3 years since I sold my Top Card machine and I was missing it.. The watering hole we met at just happed to have an RFM in the back hall way. My friend and I played it for hours laughing non stop. We were amazed that the further you got the weirder and funnier it got. This got me thinking how cool it would be to have one of my own.

So in 2006 my wife said I could have one for my anniversary gift. I tracked one down 3 hours away that needed some help. Since I am a computer tech and tinker with everything electronic, I bought it.

The machine was a reimport from Spain that was used as a parts machine. After lots of cleaning, a few RGP posts, voltage change, lots of reading and 9 months of tracking down parts from all over the world, I now have a great playing RFM with all the bells and whistles. Monster CPU Fan, Bill Ung saucer kit, Kerry Stair stainless SOL assembly, Network card, etc..


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Andrew
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Post by Andrew »

My love of Pinball goes back to a magic Christmas when Santa brought a Flash Gordon to our home!

Later I saved up paper route money and bought an F-14 tomcat, which I much later (when I was in college) sold to buy a BK2K... and yes, I had it in my dorm room!

BK2k was the first one I 'fixed' up (mostly just cleaning, and replacing a few bad connectors, wires, fuzes, etc.)

I bought a project Firepower and was quickly in over my head, but got it working eventually (though I hope someday to be able to replace the playfield... turns out I'm not really an artist!).

Next was a Star Trek TNG which Chuck knows I have had to repair - I finally bought a new 8-driver board from him after repairing but never getting reliability from the badly burnt board that came with the game.

My last pinball machine is a Star Wars EP1 that I purchased from an original owner. This machine is in the best state of all them, but like most of you with P2K machines, I live in fear of computer or monitor failure. (in fact, I'm loathe to switch it on for just a game or two... I tend to play only when I have guests).
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Post by tanthony »

My love of pinball started in college in the late 80's and early 90's. A local candy store had a small arcade. I played a fair amount of Cyclone and later Terminator at this place with my college roomates.

Over the next 20 years I mostly forgot about pinball, working at Honda and then KeyBank, got married when I'm 28, had our first child 6 years later, and our 2nd child last year.

Approaching age 40 (this year). I had some "extra" dollars from receiving an award at work and probably was having a minor "mid life crisis". Something just clicked and made me nostaligic for playing pinball. My wife probably thinks I've partially lost me mind, but doesn't give me any flak for going out and buying a TAF and STTNG within the last 6 months.

I have room and enough money for one last pinball machine. I play and price most of the "top 10" machines. I can't afford most... TAF and STTNG were the relatively "cheap" top 10 machines. I come across RFM at a local arcade and "fell in love" with it... I had never played Pinball 2000.

Now I'm very close to buying RFM from Rob "Borygard" (RPG). The decals look like hell but the machine is described as in good operating condition and nice playfield. Now I've been research RFM and SWE1 like crazy to learn all I can about them... frankly, it's been an eye opening experience and probably a bit scary. I'm thrilled to find this group here and the solutions being worked on....

Now that I discovered it, I find it a bit sad that Pinball 2000 died... while I like a newer Stern such as LOTR, it's not really meaningfully different than my TAF or STTNG in most ways. The leapfrog forward in creativity and technology was basically lost. At a minimum, the efforts here can extend it's life to be able to share it with others.
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